Five Years!

I started out with a theme in mind: I was going to write about our adventures camping and hiking in the Pacific Northwest (especially the high desert region) and I was going to blog about gardening.

Five years ago I was not a grandmother. I still had hopes of owning yet another cat (or being owned by). Owning my own dog was not on my radar.

A lot of things have changed in five years.

The last child to turn 18 moved out. The oldest child moved back in, with her family in tow. She moved back out again. Five beautiful grandsons were born.

We adopted Murphy and all dreams of having a cat live here (in the near future) were dashed.

I adopted Harvey.

My garden is a disaster.

I haven’t been camping in over a year.

My blog posts have evolved with my life and with the seasons of my life.

I have embraced some of the changes and resisted more than a few.

I don’t know how to summarize five years of blogging or five years of changes. It is what it is: a life that is fluid and ever-changing, growing in some areas and shrinking in others, a tide that ebbs and flows, and seasons that flux.

Where this blog goes in the next year or five years is a guess I cannot hazard to make. Who I will be or where I will be – those are changes that are yet to come.

When I was in my senior year of high school, I had a young English teacher who requested we all write an essay about what we wanted to be when we grew up and settled down. I wrote that I wanted to be constantly changing and growing. She told me I was unrealistic and idealistic; that life is about settling down and becoming static.

I told her that I hoped I never became static.

There are days when I wish I had never said that.

That was 38 years ago. I have settled down, but no matter how settled I have become, I have never managed to avoid constant change. Life just is not static. Life is about continued growth and change. We are propelled through this life on the wings of change and if we don’t change, we become too rigid and we break.

I will continue to write about my garden.

When we go camping, I will continue to write about it.

Harvey will continue to be a regular feature as he helps me face the challenges in my life.

There are more grandchildren to come. OK, only one at the moment and she is not a boy. My daughter-in-law is in the “final stretch” with this pregnancy.

You may see more posts about birds, faeries, artwork, and antiques. Certainly I will post something about books.

And I am certain to find more things to post about cryptozoology. Notice I said “certain”. Some things don’t change and my interest in cryptids is one of those things.

I have been pondering the same things lately. There are aspects of my life that have changed that I could have never predicted and there have been some amazingingly pleasant surprises…but one thing is for sure-my life has changed over the past few years. Wondering what the next five years will look like and what I’ll be writing on my blog then.

I have been more true to my blog than I ever was with a real paper journal. And you can tell that my faithfulness with the blog has been spotty. What’s that say about me.
You have been ever more faithful. and I hope I can take your example and get better. Thank you for the 5 years of stories and dreams.

So the three blonds were having drinks and at each drink would giggle and toast “2 days”. Finally the bartender asked what the “2 days” was all about. One answered, “we had the weekend off, were bored and decided to put together a puzzle. We finished it this afternoon, even though the box read “5 years”….